“It’s important, sir.”
“Yeah. What’s this all about?”
“Your father, sir. It’s about your father, General Dupont.”
He sat up, switched on the arc light on the nightstand to his left. “What about him?”
“Langley in an hour, sir. The NHB,” the man said, referring to the New Headquarters Building.
Tom thought for a couple of seconds. “Okay.”
The line went dead.
He put the cell down back on the nightstand, pushed back the duvet and vaulted out of bed. What the hell did the CIA want to say to him about his father at this hour? he thought. As he pulled on a pair of jeans and a black sweater, he decided that trying to work that out would be an impossible task and, at best, could only lead to increasingly negative conclusions.
He knelt down, opened the drawer on his nightstand and eased out his badge and SIG. He clipped the badge to the belt on his jeans and, out of habit, released the handgun’s magazine, checking there was a full complement of twelve .357 SIG cartridges, and that the chamber was empty. Satisfied, he walked to his closet and took a nylon windbreaker from a hangar.
Apart from his time as head of the Secretary of State’s protective detail, and a couple of occasions when he’d been in the DS counterterrorism unit, he hadn’t had any interaction with the CIA. Truth was, he felt uneasy around them, not because he feared them, but rather because he found their take on the world changed with a disconcerting regularity. One day some group was an ally, the next it was a sworn enemy.
The CIA had advocated airstrikes against the Assad regime in Syria, which would bolster the Sunni jihadists there, and then a few months later, they’d advocated airstrikes against the same Sunni jihadists to bolster the Shia regime in Iraq, and he couldn’t imagine living his life in that way. Then there was Dan Crane, of course, the man who’d been saved by his father and had helped him find the secretary. The guy was a walking contradiction, too.
Thinking this he headed out of his second-storey bedroom and down the staircase without turning on the lights. Reaching his study he couldn’t remember where he’d left his small recording device. To the world, it was a fountain pen. Sam, his veteran DS driver, had told him once that when he had to meet with the CIA or Homeland Security he should tape it. Given that this meet had something to do with his father he felt it was doubly important.
He flipped the light switch. The sudden brightness had caused his tropical fish to dart for cover. The huge tank, which lined the fourth wall, appeared to be empty. It could be a full twenty minutes before they emerged from the encrusted rock formations and clumps of green plants, and begin to swim in the open again, circling the miniature Doric columns. They were timid souls, Tom thought; or perhaps paranoiac ones, like him. Not a bad trait for a fish in a tank to have. He scribbled a note for the lady cleaner to change the water and put in a fresh delayed feeder.
He got a text message, a world security update from the DS’s counterterrorism unit. Truck bomb kills thirty-four in Ankara. Two American casualties.
It was only a twenty minute journey to Fairfax County, Virginia. Tom was driving his Buick, the streets deserted but well lit. The CIA HQ was known as Langley after the unincorporated community it was situated in a few miles west of DC. But it had been called the George Bush Center for Intelligence since 1999, a compound consisting of a couple of major linked buildings set in two hundred and fifty-eight acres of land.
After passing through the high-level security checkpoint, Tom parked his Buick in the visitors’ car lot and walked to the entrance of the New Headquarters Building, or NHB. It was a chilly early morning, dawn still hours away. He passed the “Kyptos” sculpture, which ran from the entrance to the north-west corner of the courtyard, a massive S-shaped copper screen containing numerous coded messages, and felt his sense of unease heighten.
The single-storey section of the compound was flanked by two marble pillars, the glass facade on either side bathed in a yellowish glow from the security lights. Atop the pillars, an elongated, curved glass roof gave it the appearance of a modern art museum, rather than the most sophisticated intelligence hub on earth. The NHB, completed in 1991, was characterized by two, six-storey office blocks and was situated on a hill behind the well-known Old Headquarters Building, with its iconic CIA seal in the entrance lobby.
After being processed by internal security and given a laminated visitor’s badge, Tom entered the lobby area of the NHB, which was dotted with commemorative plaques and an impressive collection of donated statues. The four-storey glass atrium between the two tower blocks had three model drones suspended overhead. They were beetle-black and would ensure that visitors were left in no doubt that what went on here was deadly serious, Tom thought.
The main entrance to the NHB was on the fourth floor of one of the blocks, with an impressive skylight ceiling. Tom stepped out of an elevator into the corridor. At the end, he could see the still well-lit structure of the Old Headquarters Building, integrated by a network of further corridors, the wall space broken up by hung works of abstract art of the Washington Color School.
Before he could be questioned at the reception desk, he noticed a slim young woman dressed in a black business suit with a large-lapelled white shirt walking towards him. Her blonde hair was cut in a neat bob, her gait confident.
As she held out her long-fingered hand to greet him, he caught a waft of her perfume. Expensive and classy, he thought, reminding himself that he hadn’t been in a relationship with a woman for close to three years. He was left feeling oddly remorseful about that, given the circumstances of his visit.
“Cindy Rimes,” she said with a distinct New York accent. “Thank you for coming, Mr Dupree.”
Tom shook her hand and nodded. “My pleasure, ma’am.”
He got the impression that she was slightly embarrassed by her name, but couldn’t think why. It was as good a name as any. He didn’t ask her why he’d been woken up and told to report here. He’d get the answers regarding his father soon enough, he figured.
“Please follow me, sir,” she said, leading him down the corridor.
Getting about halfway up the corridor he saw a large alcove and was invited to sit on a low-slung chair behind a chrome and glass table, containing several copies of the National Geographic and promotional material for the agency. Apart from a water cooler and a vending machine, the space was empty.
Thirty seconds later he watched another woman approaching him, her hair in a French plait. She was wearing a fawn skirt and pearl-white blouse. He declined the offer of coffee and was led into a meeting room nearby. Judging by the acres of glass at the NHB, he reckoned it was the only room without windows. It was roughly thirty feet square, with bare walls and a tiled floor. He sat on a chrome-armed chair at the oblong pinewood table and waited. The woman, a six-foot redhead, with flawless skin, a twenty-thousand-dollar porcelain smile and an Ivy League assuredness, had said that someone would be along shortly.
After a couple of minutes, the door opened without a knock and a heavy-set man in his early sixties entered. He wore a dove-grey suit and shiny loafers. Dan Crane, the newly appointed director of the agency’s National Clandestine Service, although that was classified.
He sat at the table and immediately began to ride the chair. “You look better than the last time I saw you, Tom,” he said. “But saying that, you couldn’t have looked worse if you’d been trampled by a herd of goddamned wildebeest. Those jokers in the DS handed you a medal yet? Saving the Secretary of State’s ass singlehanded like that. I told ya, come work for me.”
“You put weight on?” Tom asked. He didn’t like Crane’s jibe about the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and his back was up. Crane had a habit of doing that.
“Nah.